Daunomycin and doxorubicin are clinically important chemotherapeutic agents. Daunomycin is used primarily to treat adult myelogenous leukemia. Doxorubicin is widely used to treat a variety of neoplasias, making it the more valuable of the two anticancer drugs. The world wide market for doxorubicin is estimated to exceed $156 million. As of 1984, the wholesale price for doxorubicin was estimated to be $1,370,000 per kilogram.
While daunomycin is synthesized by several species of Streptomyces, doxorubicin is biologically synthesized by only one strain, a mutant strain of Streptomyces peucetius, called S. peucetius subsp. caesius which is available from the American Type Culture Collection under Accession number 27952.
The alternative in vitro laboratory synthesis of doxorubicin is difficult. The in vitro synthesis of doxorubicin is a process involving multiple steps and resulting in a poor yield, with a lack of stereospecificity in several of the synthetic steps, producing forms which are difficult to separate.
Chemical synthetic procedures are known for converting daunomycin to doxorubicin; however they require the use of halogens in the synthetic process.
It would be desirable to have an efficient, cost-effective method for producing doxorubicin that does not require the use of halogens in the synthetic process.